1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is a system and method for printing facial images of people, captured automatically from a sequence of image sequences, onto coupons or any promotional printed material, such as postcards, stamps, promotional brochures, or tickets for movies or shows.
2. Background of the Invention
In the prior art, the shortcomings of the conventional paper-based coupon systems are well known, and they can be summarized as follows.                The paper-based coupon system is inefficient because of low coupon redemption rate, which is caused by time-consuming process of keeping and organizing the coupons by customers.        Consumers consider coupons too much trouble to constantly organize and carry around.        Consumers simply forget and leave the coupons at home when they go shopping.        It can be very time-consuming at the coupon redemption point when the cashiers scan the coupons one by one. This problem can be especially aggravated when the customers have many coupons or when there is confusion in verifying the coupons for the effectiveness, such as checking the expiration date.        Significant amount of time is spent between the retailers and manufacturers to clear the coupons.        There exist widespread problems with fraudulent mis-redemption and mal-redemption.        Another disadvantage of the present paper coupon redemption system is that if consumer response to the coupon offer is not what the manufacturer had anticipated and the manufacturer wishes to re-stimulate consumers with a higher coupon discount, the manufacture must publish a whole new set of coupons. The previously printed coupons, therefore, become a largely wasted marketing effort.        It is difficult to track the buying habits of consumers on a national level because those who purchase with cash are not recorded by conventional marketing database collection. The frequent shopper cards on a local level allow demographic and buying history profiles to be compiled on cash purchases, but this has not worked well on the national level.        
In order to overcome these shortcomings, many new methods are attempted in the field of invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,218 of De Lapa et al. disclosed a merchandising system for generating and redeeming product discount coupons, which prints coupons for a selected consumer from a group of consumers by selecting particular coupons from a group of coupons to provide to the selected consumer and printing the coupons. In their system, the coupons generated will be changed to match at least the identity of the consumer and a coupon identification, both of which are encoded on the coupon in machine-readable form. However, in this system, the additional information is obtained by a telephone interview with the consumer or by the consumer completing a survey. The process is conducted indiscriminately for all consumers who wish to participate in the program. However, the method is, without any doubt, a hassle to the customers and time consuming. It also requires labor cost for calling the large number of customers for the telephone interviews.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,380,991 of Valencia et al. disclosed a system and method of allowing a shopper to obtain the benefit of reduced prices for certain items without the necessity of redeeming paper coupons. The system employs an integrated circuit (IC) smart card containing an erasable memory therein. Although this invention overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art by employing a paperless coupon redemption system, thereby avoiding the problems of the prior art in which paper coupons must be distributed by a manufacturer, retained by a customer, brought to a consumer outlet, organized at a checkout station, inspected to determine whether the coupons are expired and then redeemed at a central clearing house, the cost of giving a smart card to each customers will not be realistic at current situation.
In the prior art, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,173,851 of Off et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,612,868 of Off et al., a system and method for generating a printable discount coupon image in response to a customer's action with regard to the purchase of an item in a retail store is well described. U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,308 of Humble disclosed an invention, which is claimed to improve product checkout systems by providing enhanced computer-assisted product checkout and promotion in supermarkets and similar facilities.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,459,306 of Stein et al. disclosed a method and system for delivering product picks to a prospective individual user. Personal user information is gathered. Information on a user's use of a product is gathered, correlated and stored. In their invention, the issues for providing individually targeted promotions and recommendations coupons, predicting a likely purchase for the consumer, not promoting items, which are out of stock, and having a system with complete flexibility in determining when to product a coupon, are mentioned. However, in their disclosure, the method of gathering all the user information is not mentioned.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,665,953 of Mazzamuto et al. disclosed a self-contained personal data collector for redeeming product coupons having product code information in machine-readable form thereon. With the device, the user is able to scan coupons, receive feedback about the corresponding product, and manage the items stored in the scanner device, all by using a self-contained handheld unit. The user can carry the unit around without having to depend on external databases and peripheral devices for data processing and access to detailed product information. This invention is an example of improving the coupon redeeming method and electric device related to the method. Within this invention, the customers are able to get and manage the information about the products interactively and easily, although it is still time-consuming. Since the customers carry the self-contained handheld unit, there is a high chance that the unit can be broken or lost, and it is cumbersome for customers to carry such a device.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,710,886 of Christensen et al. disclosed a method and apparatus for distributing, generating, and redeeming discount coupons, rebate or gift certificates, or the like, tracks each coupon using a consumer ID number printed on the coupon. Coupons may be distributed electronically, such as in the form of diskette or CD-ROM software. They also address a solution for preventing a multiple redemption fraud, which can happen very easily in electric coupon method. However, it is suggested that the telemarketing personnel may request consumer demographic and or identification information, which may be entered into a centralized database.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,246 of Fajkowski disclosed an invention, which is related to an apparatus and method of recording, displaying, organizing, transporting, transferring and redeeming coupons and similar items having a bar code or UPC number.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,979 of Williams disclosed a system and apparatus for dispensing coupons having selectively printed borders around preferred products. Although this was an attempt to make the coupon look more attractive and have more security feature, thus providing a solution to the coupon fraud, the idea of having just simple borders around the coupon would not be attractive enough as much as it was intended for. Much more attractive and efficient methods for maximizing the promotion of the target product are needed.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,286 of Heiden disclosed a postage printing system having a digital coupon distribution system. The postage printing system shows an example of putting advertisement space on the coupon. While this invention is limited to the postage printing system, the embodiment of the invention shown in this document, which is called UCOUPON, can be applied further for any printed material products, such as promotional brochure, stamp, or tickets for movie or show.
Although the disclosed inventions are suggested to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional paper-based coupon system, the quality of the coupon itself has not been improved much and relatively very low attention is drawn to the issue. Thus, it is necessary to come up with a method and apparatus, which improves the quality of the coupon itself in the field of invention. Therefore, one of the main objectives of the UCOUPON is to improve the quality of coupon itself by using the computer vision technologies. The customer face image superimposition onto the product images in UCOUPON can increase the advertisement effect for the product. Seeing oneself in the product might stimulate the customer's desire to buy the product. The customers would not easily throw away coupons with their face images on them. This saves resources from being wasted by maximizing the efficiency of the coupon resources. The superimposition of the customer face image is also found to increase the amusement level to the customers.
In the prior art, the most frequently used method for gathering customer statistics is to use a telephone interview, in which the telemarketing personnel may request consumer demographic and or identification information. Another method is to rely on customer's voluntary input. Although the customer statistics can be gathered through these methods, they are still time consuming and burdensome to the customers. From the manufacturer or retail store side, they also have to spend a lot of financial resources to hire the telemarketing personnel. Therefore, an automatic and non-burdensome way of gathering such information from the consumers is needed. Primarily, the UCOUPON system does not need to require any customer input or participation to gather the demographic data, which can be gathered by computer vision technology, such as gender, age, or ethnicity of the customers, and it operates fully independently and automatically.
With regard to the coupon dispensing system, the UCOUPON can use the well-known methods, which are suggested in the prior arts as described above.